IRIX/IRAF Installation Guide

IRIX/IRAF Installation Guide

2.2. Install the files

If you are installing from tape skip forward to §2.2.2. If you are installing from a network distribution (i.e., from hard disk or CD-ROM) continue with the next section.

2.2.1. Installing from a network distribution

IRIX/IRAF is available over the network via anonymous ftp from iraf.noao.edu, in the subdirectory iraf/vnnn/IRIX, where "vnnn" is the IRAF version number, e.g., subdirectory iraf/v211/IRIX for all versions of V2.11 IRIX/IRAF.

If IRAF is being installed from a network distribution all the architecture independent IRAF files for both the core IRAF system and the NOAO packages will be in the distribution file as.irix.gen. This "file" is stored in the network archive as a directory wherein the large distribution file has been split into a number of smaller pieces, e.g.,

% ls as.irix.gen
CHECKSUMS          as.irix.gen.gz.06  as.irix.gen.gz.14  as.irix.gen.gz.22
FILES.Z            as.irix.gen.gz.07  as.irix.gen.gz.15  as.irix.gen.gz.23
as.irix.gen.gz.00  as.irix.gen.gz.08  as.irix.gen.gz.16  as.irix.gen.gz.24
as.irix.gen.gz.01  as.irix.gen.gz.09  as.irix.gen.gz.17  as.irix.gen.gz.25
as.irix.gen.gz.02  as.irix.gen.gz.10  as.irix.gen.gz.18  as.irix.gen.gz.26
as.irix.gen.gz.03  as.irix.gen.gz.11  as.irix.gen.gz.19
as.irix.gen.gz.04  as.irix.gen.gz.12  as.irix.gen.gz.20
as.irix.gen.gz.05  as.irix.gen.gz.13  as.irix.gen.gz.21
Assume that the directory as.irix.gen as shown above has been recreated somewhere on the machine on which IRAF is to be installed. We can restore the main IRAF source tree as follows.
% whoami
iraf
% cd $iraf
% cat /path/as.irix.gen/as.* | zcat | tar -xpf -
After the above finishes the root IRAF directory should appears as follows (this is for V2.11).
HS.IRIX.GEN  bin.generic  doc          math         pkg          tags
IS.PORT.GEN  bin.irix     lib          mkpkg        spool        unix
bin          dev          local        noao         sys
The file bin.irix is a link to the actual BIN directory (for binary executables), which may not exist yet. Configuring the BIN directories is discussed in section §2.2.3.

2.2.2. Installing from tape

If you have not already done so, log into the IRAF account so that the files when restored will belong to IRAF. Mount the distribution tape, which may be any supported tape drive, e.g. a DAT tape or Exabyte.

IRAF distribution tapes consist of multiple files separated by tape marks, with a TOC (table of contents) file as the first file on the tape. To find out what is on the tape, rewind it and read out the TOC file as follows (the actual device name may be different than that shown in the examples).

% mt -f /dev/tps0d1nrns rewind;  cat /dev/tps0d1nrns
This should cause a TOC file to be listed similar to the following, except for the file names which will vary depending upon what type of distribution you have. The example below is for a distribution of IRIX/IRAF.
0   Table of Contents

1   AS.IRIX.GEN   76.3Mb   IRAF, NOAO packages and sources
2   IB.IRIX.MIP   40.2Mb   IRIX binaries for IRAF core system
3   NB.IRIX.MIP   38.8Mb   IRIX binaries for NOAO packages
Here, the first column is the file number on the tape, the TOC file being file zero (the first distribution file is number one), the second column is the name of the tape file, the third column is the installed (uncompressed) disk usage for the package in megabytes, and the last column is a description of the file contents.

There are three types of tape files in the example shown: the AS file, which is all the IRAF sources (the core IRAF system, NOAO packages, and the host system interface), the IB files, or IRAF core system binaries, and the NB files, or NOAO package binaries. The NOAO package sources are included in the AS file since most people requesting IRAF are expected to want the astronomical reduction software, although IRAF can be configured without the NOAO packages if desired. All of the file objects are UNIX tar format files, with the exception of the TOC file which is a simple text file. The distribution files may be compressed if this was necessary to fit all the files on a tape.

The following commands would suffice to restore the main IRAF system to disk, given the distribution tape described by the TOC file in our example above. Once again, the tape device file and block size shown in the example will very likely have to be changed to whatever is needed for the tape device being used.

% whoami
iraf
% cd $iraf
% mt -f /dev/tps0d1nrns rewind;  mt -f /dev/tps0d1nrns fsf 1
% tar -xpf /dev/tps0d1nrns
After the above tar file read operation, the tape is left positioned to just before the EOF of the file just read, since tar stops reading the file data before reading the physical EOF. Hence, an mt fsf will be required to position to the next file on the tape. Any combination of fsf (forward skip file) or bsf (backward skip file) operations may be used to position to a file on a 9 track tape, DAT, or Exabyte. On a cartridge tape, it is best to plan things so that only forward file skips are used, using a rewind and forward skip if it is necessary to position to an earlier file on the tape.

Once the main system, containing only sources, is installed it is possible to create one or more empty BIN directories for the executables, then compile and link the full system. More commonly one will merely read the precompiled executables off the distribution tape, as we discuss in the next section.

2.2.3. Configuring the BIN directories

In IRAF all the files specific to any particular architecture are contained in a single directory called the BIN, or "binary", directory. To run IRAF you must install not only the AS (all-sources) directory tree, but the BIN directory for each architecture. The IRAF core system and the NOAO packages have separate BIN directories.

The BIN directories for the IRAF core system or a layered package (such as NOAO) are located, logically or physically, in the root directory of the IRAF core system or layered package. Every layered package has its own set of BIN directories. In the distributed V2.11 system you will find the following BIN files (directories or symbolic links) at the IRAF root.

link         bin -> bin.generic
directory    bin.generic
link         bin.irix  -> ../irafbin/bin.irix
link         noao/bin.irix  -> ../../irafbin/noao.bin.irix
If the IRAF directory structure is set up as described in
§2.1.2, with $iraf located at iraf/iraf and the BIN directories stored in iraf/irafbin, then these links will not have to be modified. If a different directory structure is used you will have to modify the links accordingly.

The bin link and the bin.generic directory are required for the correct operation of IRAF and are maintained automatically by the IRAF software management utilities. Under no circumstances should "bin" or "bin.generic" be modified or deleted! It is a common error to manually delete the bin link and manually set it to bin.irix or some other architecture, e.g. to link external programs (people get confused by the library links in lib which point to ../bin). The bin.<arch> link can be modified as desired but bin and bin.generic should be left alone. The proper way to change the IRAF architecture (i.e., set bin to a particular architecture) is to run "mkpkg arch" at the IRAF root. See the Site Manager's Guide for a complete discussion of package architecture support.

Assume that the bin.irix directory has been created somewhere, e.g. in the iraf/irafbin directory, and that the ib.irix.mip distribution files for the core IRAF system binaries have been downloaded from the network archive. We can restore the binaries with the following commands.

% cd $iraf/bin.irix
% cat /path/ib.irix.mip/ib.* | zcat | tar -xpf -
Similarly, to restore the NOAO package binaries:
% cd $iraf/noao/bin.irix
% cat /path/nb.irix.mip/nb.* | zcat | tar -xpf -
The procedure for restoring a BIN directory from a tape distribution is similar to that described in §2.2.2 for the core system. For example,

% cd $iraf/bin.irix
% mt -f /dev/tps0d1nrns rewind;  mt -f /dev/tps0d1nrns fsf 2
% tar -xpf /dev/tps0d1nrns
would restore the core system bin.irix directory from a tape containing an uncompressed ib.irix.mip as file 2 on the tape.